iamasmith

Yep, it's one of these http://www.tandyleatherfactory.co.uk/home/department/Leather/Tooling-Shoulders-Bends-Bellies/9080-315.aspx?feature=Product_8 in the 8-10oz range. Since I wanted some practice area and enough to make a Sheath I decided to cut my teeth on something reasonably inexpensive but heavy enough to make a pouch sheath with a reasonably thick welt. It's interesting what you say about it being either too hard or too soft, I will practice a bit with casing it to get the moisture deeper into the leather and let you know how it comes out.

Thanks folks, the link by Bison was a good read to understand the concepts so I'll do some more searching on Casing here to better understand the process. In answer to the maul I'm using, it's a Tandy Poly maul from the kit that I got and whilst experimenting yesterday I did manage to get about 2 or 3 proper impressions but that was following wetting the leather far more and really hitting the stamps hard about 10 times in each direction angled towards all 4 sides. I think understanding Casing the leather is the way to go now.

Hi folks, I decided that Leather crafting and carving would be another thing that I could enjoy and the perfect opportunity arose when I made myself a new whittling knife (my first ever knife too - done all by hand, no power tools apart from the loan of a use of a pillar drill).. I got myself a leather stitching kit which looks fairly reasonable and a leather carving kit from Tandy's to see if I would feel confident enough to decorate the sheath that I want to make, for the sheath materials I bought a belly of 8-10oz tooling leather. I started to experiment a little yesterday with some of the stamps and started to get reasonably confident, the kit has tools that probably aren't the standard that you guys are used to but it should suit my purposes (at least for a while, whilst I cut my teeth). The only tool that I had a real problem with was the basketweave tool. The tool in question is this one from the Tandy site.. http://www.tandyleat...ature=Product_9 It seems to require particularly deep impressions to be made in order to make something that describes the crossover of a basket. In particular, the central part of the weave stamp has no upper or lower walls. To make the stamp render something that looks like it crosses underneath the next row is something that is going to require considerable depth and try as I might it doesn't seem to take on the leather that I'm using. I'm wondering if I'm simply not wetting the leather enough to obtain this effect. I am giving it a rub with a rung out soaked sponge so that the leather takes on a slightly darker tone then going away for about 10 mins until the leather starts to return to it's original tone before attempting this. Any thoughts? is this wet enough? is there any information that folks can point me towards to give a better description of how to ensure that the leather is wet by the right amount? It may be that I don't actually put Basketweave onto this project but I would like to try out all the options before deciding on a design for the sheath. Kind regards, Andy